My invention relates to an improved means and method of securing a selected piece of work by three counterbored soft jaws in a powered rotary chuck.
Soft jaws are substituted for hard jaws in a majority of applications wherein a piece of work is to be held by a rotary chuck, such as in a lathe or the like. The preference for soft jaws instead of hard jaws is for a number of reasons including:
(a) The piece of work may be damaged by hard jaws, due to lack of conformity to the part, when the chuck is tightened in an effort to hold the work securely. PA1 (b) The soft jaws can be shaped to exact conformity to the part so that the piece of work can be fixedly secured in position.
One objective of my invention is to provide means and method to best form such soft jaws.
Soft jaws are used to try to provide maximum accuracy in holding a piece of work in exact concentricity with the center of rotation of the rotary chuck and to try to avoid any relative movement between the piece of work and the rotary chuck. It is an objective of my invention to achieve such exact concentricity and to avoid such relative movement.
Further objectives include to provide a fixture engaging soft jaw counterbores to fixedly hold said soft jaws while they are being shaped to dimensions of a piece of work to be secured thereby; to achieve ease of use of such fixture to save time; to provide a fixture design adapted for use in forming soft jaws for a wide range of parts; and to devise a fixture of low cost, high durability, simplicity of use, high reliability, and minimum maintenance.
My invention will be best understood, together with additional objectives and advantages thereof, from the following description, read with reference to the drawings, in which: